Hm so you save a few bucks by going to walmart?
After a TV scandal with Walmart I am boycotting the store. It does not make me throw up a little in my mouth, I laugh that a few bucks would encourage people to go to an under staffed store and stand in line along with 100s of other people and their ill behaved children when they can drive a few miles and go to an actual Apple store and learn about the product. Something I suggest you your self do before you knock a product you that you know nothing about.
Or you can come over and play with my Apple and I will just have my 5 year old teach you how to use it.

To say that the only reasons for purchasing an Apple is to make myself seem "elitist", that I prefer Jimmy Choo or Vera Wang over affordability and structure is calling Sarah Palin frugal, and conservative for spending $150,000 on a wardrobe she wore for ONE MONTH! I like quality...it makes me feel secure, cozy even. Knowing that I will be saving myself so much time, emotion, money, phone bills for Tech support, the certainty of less viral corruption, well then I'm sorry, that's just priceless. And as for Wal Mart, you have to agree w/Applefreak...any company that would sue it's own paralyzed (job related)employee for medical payment re-coup after her son was just killed fighting a war that supposedly keeps them at the top of earnings, well their CEO's propably shop for Vera Wang & Jimmy Choo. So wrap me in cashmere; you can have the polyester.

Where did I knock the product? I happen to know a fair amount about the product. They are good products. I only knocked the hype.

I have run Vista for over a year with no instability issues or "fixes" needed. There is nothing, literally nothing, that can be done with an Apple machine that can't be done with a PC. And I ask a fair amount from my machines.

As far as the threadbare "so simple a 5 year old yada, yada, yada" argument: With an 89.6% market share, in raw numbers just how many more 5 year-olds out there are using Windows than are using Macs? Lots more. The five year olds somehow seem to be doing just fine without the machines that "a five year old could run."

The only difference between the two platforms is style, not actual utility.

Just having bought my 35th Mac I would qualify as an Apple freak. But there's no disputing the amount of hype in the brand. Mac users tend to be demanding, creative types, and Apple, to remain alive, has to listen to them. Macroshaft has so much market share that it really doesn't have to listen to consumers, and when it gets worried it does really lame things like its Windows Mojave Experiment, where they actually shill for their own project.

Yes, you can do anything with either platform. But the difference with an Apple is the intuitive ease. Virtually everything that Windows has was pioneered by Apple--from Windows to plug-and-play to the new technologies. A woman who worked for me wanted to import MP3s into iTunes and asked how; I didn't know but suggested she select them and drag them to the iTunes icon. It worked.

I have recently worked on two Windows machines, although XP and not Vista. Garish and cluttered and not the slightest bit intuitive. And have you noticed that virtually every single window on television is an Apple window, even pasted onto a Windows machine? Except for www.foreverfast.com which pastes Windows windows on stylish Apple machines which it says it can't work on.

Steve Jobs is a anal orifice and noodly appendage but is the best synthesist of technology on the planet. Bill Gates is a good philanthropist and seems a decent fellow, but at heart he's just a bean counter. Whose machines do you want to use?

The Mac v. PC argument in a nutshell from NewAppleUser....

Sarah Palin and family thrown into the national spotlight forcing them to travel away from home and make several public appearances a day EVERY day up until the election spends $150,000 on a wardrobe for her and her family to wear for what has to be hundreds of appearances:

A diva, a profligate spender, a false fiscal conservative and joke fodder for the chattering classes.

Barack Obama spends a like amount on a faux Greek Temple that is used for 120 minutes:

Lightworker and Messiah! Martin Luther Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr!

Maybe if Sarah Palin had just worn a black turtleneck and faded jeans.....

Careful, Nat, you approach blasphemy with your post. I picture signs that say, "Behead those who insult Apple."

Give Steve Jobs his props then. It can't be easy to be both an orifice and a noodly appendage.

Mr. Jobs has done well selling his product, and many are quite happy playing with it.

However , studies have shown that constant usage of Mr. Jobs product will cause loosening of the teeth and loss of sexual libido .

It is also not the best idea to keep your "Apple" in an area at night where your pets may sleep on it. Place it in an area where the pets and small children will not be subjected to the gamma rays , fluxed from the "Apple" diode X radiatron.
Someplace up high or preferably in a shed somewhere ,when not in use.

I must admit I'm a PC kinda guy with firm teeth with a good you-know-what kinda drive.

I'd like to keep it that way.

You have been warned.

Where does an alien go to register viz a viz Apple et al?

"Which, in turn, has driven the Windows market share to its LOWEST POINT EVER!!! 89.6%."

The vast majority of people also watch American Idol and eat at Chili's.

That doesn't mean it's any good.

:-)